Maroon memories: Hearts in total control

Cesnauskas bagged one of Hearts' goals. Picture: TSPL

Kilmarnock 1 Hearts 3, February 16, 2005

TWO new arrivals from the land of Vladimir Romanov made an enormous contribution to an impressive Hearts performance as they progressed into the quarter-final of the Scottish Cup, after a replay at Rugby Park.

Deividas Cesnauskis, making his debut, was a hugely promising presence in tandem with Saulius Mikoliunas, scoring the third of the visitors’ goals as an appropriate finish to what was a performance of unchallenged superiority. On a night that could not be spoiled even by Kris Boyd’s injury-time penalty goal for the home side, teenager Lee Wallace scored his first goal for Hearts, while Lee Miller continued his goalscoring form with the second.

Having scored an extraordinary goal in the first match in this cup tie, a 2-2 draw, Miller helped himself once more as Hearts seemed intent on proving that Kilmarnock’s achievement in taking the tie to a replay had been a fluke.

Even in the short time it took Miller to put his imprint on the match, Hearts were not only immeasurably ahead of their opponents in the matter of overall play, but had already taken the lead through the prodigious, 17-year-old Wallace.

Wallace carried the ball, utterly free of a challenge from a seemingly somnolent home side, from his own half deep into opposition territory before playing a sharp one-two with Dennis Wyness. Bolting through the inside-left channel to receive the precisely-delivered return pass, Wallace moved forward another few yards before lashing the left-foot shot high past Alan Combe from a range of about ten yards.

Miller added weight to that on the first occasion the striker was given the opportunity to show a sample of his work. Simon Ford, the Kilmarnock defender, tried to intercept Paul Hartley’s clipped free kick from the right, but merely glanced the header straight towards Miller who, in an instant, sent his header, from the left of the home goal, high into the far corner.

It was indicative of Hearts’ comprehensive superiority that, throughout the entire first half, Kilmarnock’s solitary, genuine scoring chance came about by accident. In clearing his lines, Andy Webster drove the ball against Steven Naismith, who took advantage of his good fortune by sending a low cross from the right to Boyd. From close range, the big striker shot wide.

Even before Cesnauskis and Mikoliunas combined to produce the third goal, they had rampaged to such an extent that the debutant should have delivered his maiden strike eight minutes before he did. Mikoliunas played his compatriot in on the left, Cesnauskis cutting inside Ford and opening up a path to his target, obstructed only by Combe.

The goalkeeper did enough to prevent damage, throwing himself at the powerful drive to make the block. When Cesnauskis took possession of the loose ball and cut it back to Mikoliunas, that effort, too, was halted. There would be no mercy soon after, however, as Mikoliunas produced some trickery on the right, leaving defenders bewildered, before slipping the ball low to Cesnauskis. This time the recipient, on the turn and from the right of goal, drove the ball high past Combe.

Kilmarnock secured a consolation goal in injury time with a penalty by Boyd.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.